


ai

by cosmicpoet



Series: shuake week 2019 [3]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Hell, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, dante's inferno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 21:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21043037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Akira dies after harnessing the power of Satanael, finding himself thrown into another test - to travel through Hell, hoping he can save the one person he didn't manage to save in life.





	ai

Akira bursts into a supernova, the light that floods the blasphemous eyes of God himself coming from deep within his chest; a burning cacophony of rebellion, feather-light and heavy all at once, golden tendrils snaking around his arms and throat until he can choke out a future of his own creation. Damnation seeps thick into his soul, but he wrings his hands into the marrow of destruction and pulls out something called _heart - _still beating and almost-calcified, his very existence a testimony at the wrong kind of pulpit. _Come to the altar,_ he hears voices saying, _desecrate and blaspheme and hang your crucified body all the wrong kinds of sideways._

There’s mania in the air around the Phantom Thieves as Akira commands Satanael into taking the final shot, a force which rips from deep within his chest itself, shattering his ribs like butterfly wings as they breach openly and violently, bullets flying with all the force of lungs and heart and breath that shatters glass against the dissonance.

And then everything is muted, and Akira is on his back, muffled ringing in his ears that sounds so much like angel-song. He wants to smile, to _smirk _at the remnants of God, but he’s waving in some other dimension, oscillating between body and mind and mask, faintly feeling like there’s someone’s hand in his own.

“He’s…” Morgana’s voice comes close to his ear.

“Joker!” That’s Yusuke.

“Hey, he’s going to be alright, isn’t he?” Futaba whispers; he hears it through their communication devices, her voice like the wind, never sticking to sentiment for fear of making it true.

“C’mon,” Ryuji says, “he’s fine. He has to be - he’s our leader. Leaving us at our victory isn’t how this should go.”

“I… n-not again,” Haru sobs, and Akira’s mind floods with memories of her father, spluttering and aching his way to a somewhat-deserved death; so sweetly accustomed with violence, despite acting without casualty, he can’t bring himself to separate the man from the crime. There’s only one person that he’s never doubted forgiving, and he’s long since dust.

“This is… horrible,” Ann says.

“Joker, can you hear me?” Makoto adds, but he’s soon enough not listening - or, rather, incapable of listening, his mind floating far above his body, having chosen, or been forced into, seeping across the boundary of life and death. From up here, everything looks so beautiful; the watercolour skyline muting itself as it sinks behind buildings, the remnants of the fight glistening in the dusk, and a body - _his _body - motionless and cracked like porcelain, surrounded by friends.

He can’t help but be satisfied. Perhaps death is truly easier than giving up his mask; the freedom of Joker will forever be immortalised in the way he simply could not separate himself from the rebel in his heart enough to live some semblance of normality once more. Reaching his hand up to his face, he sees that his mask is firmly in place, steadfast as it was the very moment he awakened to Arsene all those months ago.

The way the sun sinks against his body is a sight to behold. The coils of his heart wind tightly into sickness as he notices how Ann holds his hand, how Morgana sits on his chest and won’t move, how Ryuji simply clutches any part of him he can grab onto; the soft cries of Futaba and Haru - an aria of being alone again, as much as Akira wants to tell them that they _aren’t - _punctuate the silence in between Makoto’s voice breaking and Yusuke telling Akira to get up, this really isn’t beautiful at all.

And then he’s being thrown downwards, all harsh and aching, his bones cracking under the weight of all the stars that swing sickly around his eyes. Bursting through the ground, the core of the Earth itself begins to heat all around him, and he’s flailing, now, grace so far from the mangled mess of limbs and hair and eyes and a disembodied spirit on its way to an inevitable Hell. Is this it? After all he did, could right and wrong still be defined by bias and outdated religious morality, some Eldritch unfairness ripping him to shreds until he hits the ground with resolve and a hard break that defines everything into _before _and _now?_

Akira blinks himself into recognition. It’s undeniable that he’s dead, but he still has cause within his chest to move; slowly, at first, twisting his limbs back to where they should be and pushing through the pain until he can stand up. His vision swims into something, finally, and he’s standing at the gates of some kind of castle, a dusty and disused moat separating him from whatever is inside.

Above him, the sky is vast and endless, but there’s nothing familiar in it; no clouds, no stars, not even a discernible colour that could separate the very alive, human idea of _sky _from the immortal eternity of nothingness. Although there’s grass under his feet, it’s undefined, like he’s walking through some game program that hasn’t been quite finished - it’s not good, or bad, it just exists by some kind of thread that almost breaks into unreality.

He begins to wade through the moat, his legs burdened by heavy water that doesn’t seem to ripple or move even as he pushes through it. When it becomes too deep, he tries to swim, but finds that he doesn’t have to exert much effort - rather, he’s carried across by some listless force that must have nothing better to do, fatigued of its own consumption. 

Still, he reaches the castle gate, memories of his Persona awakening hard in his heart. Through the barrier, he sees seven, similar gates, all of which are open, but nobody seems to be coming in or out of them; instead, any people that he sees are merely _existing, _lifeless and lethargic, just bodies uninhabited by any humanity or spirit. They don’t even notice him as he pushes past them, to the point where Akira is desperate to grab them by the shoulders and scream at them to take back whatever control they’ve had ripped from them - he does exactly this, his hoarse voice demanding answers from a man whose stare seeps only into the nothingness in the distance.

“It’s better here,” the man says.

“Better than what?” Akira commands him to answer.

“I’m sorry… were we talking? Who are you?”

He clearly isn’t going to get any answers from any of these pathetic souls, those who’ve given up for fear of worse, never enacting any change in an eternity of their own creation. All he can do is tread further through the castle, the compulsion to rip the skin off the faces of those almost-shadows that he’s surrounded by bringing back bittersweet memories of Joker. 

Right now, he’s just Akira. Even as he reaches the end of the castle and sees a vast cliff, even as he knows that the only option is to jump, even as he free-falls through the blistering wind and uncertainty, he remembers his name and continues on.

Instead of hitting the ground instantly, he’s picked up by a gust of wind, tossed like his body is nothing but feathers, across an expanse of ocean. It could almost feel like flying, if he wasn’t permanently stuck with his heart in his throat, like his body itself is being rearranged into something other-than-human. It feels like falling, but falling _forever, _and he doesn’t hit the ground hard. He just makes light contact with it before the wind picks him up again, violently throwing him into a discordant mass of bodies, pushing forwards and back against the hurricane. Their cries carry further than human voices should, becoming one with the wind until the whole world sounds like it’s whistling in between realities.

And now he’s thinking of the Velvet Room, of the distinction between mind and matter and mask and form and life and home and of the one person he could never save. He can’t bring himself to be bitter about his fate, least of all because he made it a rebellious point to defy God himself, but it hurts undeniably that he had people to save him from what he could have been, and Goro did not.

Goro. Akira wonders where he is, now.

Simply thinking of him spurs Akira onwards, determined beyond doubt not to let this be the end of him. He promised Goro that he’d change Shido’s heart, and he did, and now he has to promise himself that he’ll get out of here and emerge victorious in the selfsame anchor of world-reforming golden glory that he felt the moment Satanael emerged from his heart.

The wind bites his face, but his mask, for the most part, shields his eyes enough that he can see his path forwards. He lets the wind carry him for a bit, just enough that whatever sentience exists in this Hell can let its guard down, and then he bolts full force for the horizon; there’s enough air in his lungs to swell outwards and challenge the nature of nature itself.

It takes him well over two days, and by the time he breaches through wind and falls fast onto his face, the shock of no longer being pulled backwards like whiplash against his exhausted body, he almost forgets how to breathe. For a moment, he lies on his back, staring at the insides of his eyes, before he feels the thick tendrils of the hurricane attempt to wrap around his arms again, and he realises that he cannot rest, lest he be thrown backwards into something that he’s already overcome. 

Then, he realises that, more than anything, he’s freezing cold. His shoes start to fill with some strange balance of ice and snow, the texture offensive and the temperature making it impossible to feel that he’s walking, save for the fact that he can see himself moving forwards. The people lying in the vile slush, facedown and moaning, grasp at his legs, trying to pull him downwards to lie with them forever. He not only has to fight against the biting cold, but he has to pull himself away from the hands that lay claim to his body; souls wanting to share their misery with anyone who dares to traverse through Hell.

Blinking, he sees in the distance a large body - or, more like a mass of bodies, slithering together into one, coherent creature. Almost like a giant worm, it presides over the suffering of those immediately around it, its skin emitting some kind of cold-smoke; with no eyes, it uses its offensive body to squirm around the masses, feeling for their suffering and absorbing it like sustenance into its flesh.

Akira has no problem with that. He’s faced enough shadows to place some confidence in his stride as he approaches, reaching in his pockets for any material weapons that can assist him in battle.

All he has are a knife and a gun with two bullets. That’ll have to do.

Once he stands off against the monster - identified by some disembodied voice as _Cerberus - _he tries to rip the mask off his face to summon his Persona, but nothing happens. He can’t even remove it at all, and the realisation that this will be a hands-on fight sinks deep into his chest; resolutely, he grips his dagger and lunges forwards, exhausting himself in violence and determination.

He saves the two bullets for the final blow, standing over the body of Cerberus and demanding to pass through to the next test. Unsure of _why _exactly he’s traversing through this Hell, all Akira knows is that there’s something he’s forgetting, something deep within his heart that means he can’t give up now.

And so he doesn’t.

The sight he sees next causes him to freeze in terror. A mass of bodies, contorted painfully into caricatures and separated into two groups, pushing boulders with their bloody chests; they carry jousting swords, and fight one another with reckless hatred. It’s a strange duality, to have two distinct bodies of _bodies, _but each within is fending only for itself in this endless fight - Akira wonders if this is how it must feel to be unable to reconcile oneself with a mask, if this is how Goro felt, pretending to be someone he wasn’t whilst being manipulated when he _was_ authentic. It breaks something inside him to see the fight, so endless, so raw, and all he can do is throw himself into the thick of it and hope to survive.

No longer an individual, Akira is simply a pawn in a game that he doesn’t want to be playing. The swords of those around him cut into his flesh, leaving hot traces of blood down his face, but he can’t save everyone - he had to learn _that _the hard way. Instead, he just holds his own body close, convincing himself that he’s alive and real and that there has to be hope at the end of all of this, and runs through the fight until he makes it to the other side.

It’s been days, by this point, or at least he assumes it has - there’s nothing to indicate the passage of time in here. Still, he has to break through in order to break out of here, find out what metaphorical light is at the end of the tunnel.

He reaches a large river. There’s a little rowboat tethered to the side, and he uses his dagger to cut the ropes and free it, swiftly jumping in and trying to row; there are people in the water, gurgling and almost-dead, and he has to make an effort not to hit any of them with the oar. Angry at their listlessness, how they’ve just _given up, _he pulls one of them up and shouts in their face.

“Get up!”

The person - no, the _body - _moans in response.

“Aren’t you going to fight for your life?”

Still nothing. It hurts Akira to have to let them sink back into the water, but as much as he wants to save everyone floating here, he can’t take away their free will to stay in this depressing eternity, nor can he flood the boat with too many bodies. And so he continues on, splitting through until he sees people, almost floating on the surface of the water, fighting. Their blood runs fast and thin, mingling with the dirty river water, but they show no signs of stopping, even though exhaustion is painted across their faces.

Thankfully, they pay him no mind as he rows between them, and Akira closes his eyes in silent sorrow for the fate of the masses that he’s passed through since he fell into Hell. It’s somewhat reminiscent of society, or at least, the way Mementos seeped into society and held ransom the bodies of anyone who wanted to give up the effort of being free. 

Gulping down a breath of foul, underworld air, he reaches the end of the river and disembarks.

The first thing that hits him, now, is the burning heat, followed shortly by the thick smoke that chokes him. He pulls his undershirt up above his mouth to try and save his lungs, walking through burning coal; the ache that’s already overtaken his whole body begins to worsen with the temperature change, until he can barely move any longer. He falls down, his legs hitting the ground first, before something pushes him on the back and and he keeps falling, beyond the surface, until he’s surrounded by dirt and broad wood panels; he doesn’t realise it’s a coffin until the lid slams shut and he can’t breathe any more.

He’d never have told the Phantom Thieves, but all the crawling through vents in the Metaverse filled him with anxiety; he’s never liked small spaces, but this takes the cake for the worst one yet. Trapped inside a tiny box, struggling to breathe, surrounded on all sides by heat that he realises, with a terrified yelp, is coming from the flames that are beginning to cremate him. Well, he’s not exactly alive, is he? But he thought that his body would simply dissipate alongside Mementos, not be doomed for eternity to burn inside his worst physical fear.

The smoke begins to choke him, and he panics, trying to push against the coffin lid to get out - god, _he needs to get out. _His body feels thick and heavy as he slams his palms against the wood, hearing it creak under the pressure and the destruction of the flames; finally, he breaks free, and his mouth, stuck in a silent scream, fills with the dirt that collapses onto his body, but at least it dampens the flames.

Manic and terrified, Akira breaks free and runs with no discernible direction, until he’s away from the flames and he can just hear desperate screams in the distance that he left behind.

He emerges right into chaos. It’s the heat of a bloody battle, violence in all forms - fighting, fucking, tearing flesh right off the skin of everyone around and swallowing the blood whole, like feral vampirism that infects the whole scene. Violence _as _disease. 

Someone hits him in the back of the head, and his vision swims, sickly and yellow. There’s blood on his hand when he touches the ache, but he can’t stop now, lest he be caught up in the horrifying marrow of it all. There’s no pattern or plan in the way he runs, he just _does, _right across the burning red skyline, through the bodies and blood and brutalisation. There’s been so much violence that the remnants become a boiling river, and knives tear at his flesh, gaping wounds not-quite managing to slow him down, because although he doesn’t know where he is, he can almost taste the end of it like acid on his tongue. Even if the end is just nothingness, it’ll be a reprieve from Hell, at least.

But he can’t help thinking he’s here to accomplish some sort of goal.

Now, he’s running through the dark depths of trees, each distorted into some screaming face, begging for death a second time around. They wail, drowning in melancholy, as winged creatures peck at their eyes, eating them whole, only to be resurrected again for the torture to continue forever. Running wild through the forest are large dogs, teeth bared and grins dripping with fresh meat, chasing down naked figures, only to tear them apart and leave them, half-dead, gasping and choking on their own blood, sinking into the marshy floor.

He falls to his hands and knees once he escapes, not even having time to catch his breath before the talons of some large beast pierce through his clothes, sinking into the flesh of his back and lifting him upwards, away from the scene. He passes stony bridges, separating layers of rock and mud, in which the bodies of the masses clamour amongst each other, pushing each other down but never quite managing to reach the top and get out. Akira feels the ice-cold grip of fear that if this beast drops him, he’s unsure of his own skills to climb out, too, and all he can do is close his eyes and try to imagine that there’s an easier way to die than this. 

No, this has to have a purpose.

Suddenly, the beast recoils, and Akira is falling again. He hits his back, hard, against the final stone bridge, just about managing to pick himself up, thankful enough that he didn’t fall into one of the ditches. Walking forwards, there’s a sense of finality in all of this, as he emerges into a cavern of icicles and faces frozen in literal fear. There’s a man, his face bloody, his mouth stuffed with silver coins, submerged in an icy lake, with only his head breaching the surface; he shivers as much as he can with his immobile body, looking with questioning eyes at Akira.

Akira slips down the fortress of ice and approaches him. As he gets closer, he sees a crown of thorns on his head, a mockery that this man sinks into in acceptance of his own betrayal. 

There’s a voice in his head that tells him he can’t dwell too long, that he’s almost at the finish line, and if he stays here too long he’ll get stuck in overthinking what it means to be a hero, and he’ll never manage to change his biggest regret.

He cracks the ice with his heels as he walks towards the dark underbelly of the cavern, but it reforms instantly, almost snaking tendrils up his legs and keeping him trapped. Still, there’s something calling to him, now, a disembodied voice that isn’t speaking actual words, but he follows it anyway.

And then he sees him.

_Him._

It’s so dark, but Akira would recognise him in any lifetime. _Goro. _Frozen in the lake, his arms pinned to his sides, his hair wild and his eyes terrified. He closes them, now, and Akira knows that Goro doesn’t want to face him after everything that happened - understandable, but heartbreaking nonetheless. 

“Goro,” he drops to his knees and holds Goro’s face in his hands, “you’re here.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Please,” Akira notices that Goro’s eyes are frozen with tears, now, and he plants gentle kisses against them to melt away the ice, “come home.”

“This is what I deserve.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I killed you,” Goro spits.

“I lived. No harm done, yeah?” Akira has to hold back tears of his own, now. He’s desperately reaching for Goro, wanting to pull him out and break him free from the Hell that he doesn’t deserve; right now, Akira _hates _whatever God set this whole thing up, the sheer injustice of it all - Goro had been manipulated right from the start, and he’s been left to suffer the consequences of his trauma and rejection completely alone.

Not any more.

“Why are you here, Akira? You shouldn’t be in Hell. You shouldn’t be _dead.”_

“Let’s just say that shooting God in the face doesn’t put you on Heaven’s good side.”

“You’re something else.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Akira says, “but I’m not leaving you here.”

“Even if I wanted to leave, I _can’t. _Do you think I haven’t tried? I realised after all my failed attempts that this is my punishment, and I have to just take it. I’d like to do that with some dignity, so let me go.”

“No. I lost you once.”

“Then it won’t be a problem to do it again.”

Akira wants to scream. Instead, he just clings onto Goro, his chest burning with a familiar sense; with one arm wrapped around Goro, shielding him from the inevitable, Akira rips off his mask and lets the blood run down his face.

Powerful, burning light cascades down upon them like shooting stars, white-hot and ripping raw flesh, touching the ice enough to send a shuddering _crack _through the cavern. Akira begins to pull at Goro’s shoulders until his left hand becomes free, and then he’s clutching onto it, desperate and aching with fire in his chest, using all of his human force to try and free Goro from a Hell that he doesn’t deserve. But he’s weak from the trials he’s endured, and he can’t quite manage to break him out.

But Akira is never alone.

His heart almost explodes with yearning and then he’s holding Goro with both of his arms, now, as he commands Satanael once more. The Persona complies, struck with an expanse of rebellion as fire circles around the pair of them, burning welts in Akira’s skin - still, he clings onto Goro, trying to shield him from most of the damage. Something comes loose, and then he’s yanking Goro out of the icy lake and they’re floating upwards, carried upon Satanael’s wings out of the cavern. 

Goro blinks in disbelief, and Akira still won’t let go of him, terrified to lose him again. They pass the prior layers of Hell, with Akira letting Goro rest on his shoulder, not wanting him to have to see the rest of the souls that neither of them could save.

Instead, they accept that this has to be their ending. Satanael detonates against a pitch black sky, erupting into crushed stars that fly out like pieces of a grenade, and Akira and Goro are in the thick of it all, both burning and cold, but content to be floating amongst the expanse of rebirth. 

Dark creeps in once more, and Akira finds himself disembodied. He didn’t expect to go to Heaven, so he isn’t surprised to find himself sadly lacking choir-song and pearly gates, but this is enough - to float, hand in hand with Goro, against the backdrop of the universe itself, starlight lifting their hearts far, far away from Hell.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is posted a day early but it's my day off from uni today so I wanted to get this done in case I don't have time to do it tomorrow! 
> 
> Thank you to my amazing gf for talking about this AU with me (oh yeah I have a gf now, gay rights!)


End file.
